> How does the Xforms policy fit in with Open Source? As I understand it, Open
> Source means the source is available ( for lot's of good reasons), but unlike
> GPL you can make money from the considerable development work. ...
>
> On the other hand, one must respect the authors wishes. This topic comes up
> from time to time and the reason it does is because the arguments for the
> position just don't seem to stack up.
I'm not the author or copyright holder of XForms and I certainly would
not presume to speak for either Mark Overmars or TC Zhao -- I've only
met TC once at a conference and have never met nor corresponded with
Mark Overmars to my recollection.
My understanding, however, is that the source is being withheld from
general distribution not so much to profit from proprietary source [my
understanding is that there has been very little, if any, profit] but
to maintain some sort of control over the software. I believe that
Mark Overmars had some problems early on in the old GL Forms days with
variant versions getting out and causing him problems and this was the
original reason for a "closed source" environment.
In any case, TC and I discussed this matter a bit when we met in
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, last year at Viz `98. I know
that TC's work load on his real job is precluding taking XForms as far
as many of us would like it and some changes in the licensing will
probably be made for the good of the package and the community of
users. Whether this will take the form of Open Source [tm], GPL, or
what, I'm not in a position to say at the moment.
Certainly one of many things that would have to be changed is the
build procedure, which is somewhat non-standard, probably for
historical reasons.
I'm not sure if this clarifies the situation or not.
spl
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